Twelve-Week Olympic “Intermediate Level” Training Plan


Inverted Periodization — Introduction to a New Way of Training


Since I started to coach athletes over 15 years ago, I always contested the traditional method of training that was available at the time. The traditional periodization implies that ideally an athlete can only peak for an event one or maybe two times per year. This made no sense based on what I had experienced and was starting to teach others. As an athlete myself, I wanted to do well in most races of the season and not only in one or two.


In addition, I noticed the strong lack of development of proper motor skills, technique, speed and strength during the “base phase” that so many training partners religiously applied to their training. In fact, most of them started the “base phase” faster than when they finished and faster than their season races. Obviously it made no sense adding volume in training when the basic foundation skills were not yet developed! Today I see many athletes with poor


motor-pattern development increasing their chances of injury and poor performance due to the unsuitable volume they do during the base phase of the traditional “periodization” training approach. For many, the fear of not conquering the distance is responsible for most of the over-distance training and many of the mistakes! Not satisfied with the information I was


getting from coaches and books to explain the reasoning behind using


a traditional


periodization theory for multisport training, I began to develop an alternative way of training that culminated in an article about inverted training periodization in 2003. As the name implies,


inverted periodization


focuses on developing technique, strength and speed first and endurance closer to your event(s). There are increasing numbers of coaches and sports scientists contesting the traditional periodization of training. The basis of training periodization was founded several decades ago, when scientific knowledge was far from complete and athletes’ workloads, results and demands were much lower than they are currently. At that time, it was proposed to consider traditional training periodization as a division of the whole seasonal program


page 8 | PERFORMANCECOACHING


By Sergio Borges USA Triathlon Level III Certified Coach


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